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A Study on Improving Scheme and An Investigation into the Actual Condition about Components of Physical Distribution System (물류시스템 구성요인에 관한 실태분석과 개선방안에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, Kyeong-Cho
    • Journal of Distribution Science
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    • v.7 no.4
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    • pp.47-56
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    • 2009
  • The purpose of this study is to present an alternative improving the efficient and reasonable of the physical distribution system management is influenced by many factors. Therefore, the study depends on the documentary method and survey method to achieve the purpose of this study. The major components of a physical distribution system are refers to as elements, include warehouse·storage system, transportation system, inventory system, physical distribution information system. The factors used in this study are ① factor of product(quality·A/S·added value of product·adaption of product·technical competitive power to other enterprises), ② factor of market(market channel·kinds of customer·physical distribution share), ③ factor of warehouse·storage(warehouse design·size·direction·storage ability·warehouse quality), ④ factor of transportation(promptness·reliability·responsibility·kinds of transportation·cooperation united transportation system·national transportation network), ⑤ factor of packaging (packaging design·material·educating program·pollution degree measure program), ⑥ factor of inventory(ordinary inventory criterion·consistence for inventories record), ⑦ factor of unloaded(unloaded machine·having machine ratio), ⑧ factor of information system (physical distribution quantity analysis·usable computer part), ⑨ factor of physical distribution cost(sales ratio to product) ⑩ factor of physical distribution system(physical distribution center etc). The implication of this study can be summarized as follows: ① In firms that have not adopted a systems integrative approach, physical distribution is a fragmented and often uncoordinated set of activities spread throughout various functions with function having its own set of priorities and measurements. ② The physical distribution is recognized as more an important strategic factor than a simple cost reduction factor, ③ It can be used a strategic competition tool to enterprise.

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A Study on the Strategy of IoT Industry Development in the 4th Industrial Revolution: Focusing on the direction of business model innovation (4차 산업혁명 시대의 사물인터넷 산업 발전전략에 관한 연구: 기업측면의 비즈니스 모델혁신 방향을 중심으로)

  • Joeng, Min Eui;Yu, Song-Jin
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.25 no.2
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    • pp.57-75
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    • 2019
  • In this paper, we conducted a study focusing on the innovation direction of the documentary model on the Internet of Things industry, which is the most actively industrialized among the core technologies of the 4th Industrial Revolution. Policy, economic, social, and technical issues were derived using PEST analysis for global trend analysis. It also presented future prospects for the Internet of Things industry of ICT-related global research institutes such as Gartner and International Data Corporation. Global research institutes predicted that competition in network technologies will be an issue for industrial Internet (IIoST) and IoT (Internet of Things) based on infrastructure and platforms. As a result of the PEST analysis, developed countries are pushing policies to respond to the fourth industrial revolution through cooperation of private (business/ research institutes) led by the government. It was also in the process of expanding related R&D budgets and establishing related policies in South Korea. On the economic side, the growth tax of the related industries (based on the aggregate value of the market) and the performance of the entity were reviewed. The growth of industries related to the fourth industrial revolution in advanced countries overseas was found to be faster than other industries, while in Korea, the growth of the "technical hardware and equipment" and "communication service" sectors was relatively low among industries related to the fourth industrial revolution. On the social side, it is expected to cause enormous ripple effects across society, largely due to changes in technology and industrial structure, changes in employment structure, changes in job volume, etc. On the technical side, changes were taking place in each industry, representing the health and medical sectors and manufacturing sectors, which were rapidly changing as they merged with the technology of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In this paper, various management methodologies for innovation of existing business model were reviewed to cope with rapidly changing industrial environment due to the fourth industrial revolution. In addition, four criteria were established to select a management model to cope with the new business environment: 'Applicability', 'Agility', 'Diversity' and 'Connectivity'. The expert survey results in an AHP analysis showing that Business Model Canvas is best suited for business model innovation methodology. The results showed very high importance, 42.5 percent in terms of "Applicability", 48.1 percent in terms of "Agility", 47.6 percent in terms of "diversity" and 42.9 percent in terms of "connectivity." Thus, it was selected as a model that could be diversely applied according to the industrial ecology and paradigm shift. Business Model Canvas is a relatively recent management strategy that identifies the value of a business model through a nine-block approach as a methodology for business model innovation. It identifies the value of a business model through nine block approaches and covers the four key areas of business: customer, order, infrastructure, and business feasibility analysis. In the paper, the expansion and application direction of the nine blocks were presented from the perspective of the IoT company (ICT). In conclusion, the discussion of which Business Model Canvas models will be applied in the ICT convergence industry is described. Based on the nine blocks, if appropriate applications are carried out to suit the characteristics of the target company, various applications are possible, such as integration and removal of five blocks, seven blocks and so on, and segmentation of blocks that fit the characteristics. Future research needs to develop customized business innovation methodologies for Internet of Things companies, or those that are performing Internet-based services. In addition, in this study, the Business Model Canvas model was derived from expert opinion as a useful tool for innovation. For the expansion and demonstration of the research, a study on the usability of presenting detailed implementation strategies, such as various model application cases and application models for actual companies, is needed.

A Machine Learning-based Total Production Time Prediction Method for Customized-Manufacturing Companies (주문생산 기업을 위한 기계학습 기반 총생산시간 예측 기법)

  • Park, Do-Myung;Choi, HyungRim;Park, Byung-Kwon
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.27 no.1
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    • pp.177-190
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    • 2021
  • Due to the development of the fourth industrial revolution technology, efforts are being made to improve areas that humans cannot handle by utilizing artificial intelligence techniques such as machine learning. Although on-demand production companies also want to reduce corporate risks such as delays in delivery by predicting total production time for orders, they are having difficulty predicting this because the total production time is all different for each order. The Theory of Constraints (TOC) theory was developed to find the least efficient areas to increase order throughput and reduce order total cost, but failed to provide a forecast of total production time. Order production varies from order to order due to various customer needs, so the total production time of individual orders can be measured postmortem, but it is difficult to predict in advance. The total measured production time of existing orders is also different, which has limitations that cannot be used as standard time. As a result, experienced managers rely on persimmons rather than on the use of the system, while inexperienced managers use simple management indicators (e.g., 60 days total production time for raw materials, 90 days total production time for steel plates, etc.). Too fast work instructions based on imperfections or indicators cause congestion, which leads to productivity degradation, and too late leads to increased production costs or failure to meet delivery dates due to emergency processing. Failure to meet the deadline will result in compensation for delayed compensation or adversely affect business and collection sectors. In this study, to address these problems, an entity that operates an order production system seeks to find a machine learning model that estimates the total production time of new orders. It uses orders, production, and process performance for materials used for machine learning. We compared and analyzed OLS, GLM Gamma, Extra Trees, and Random Forest algorithms as the best algorithms for estimating total production time and present the results.

A Study on the Impact of SNS Usage Characteristics, Characteristics of Loan Products, and Personal Characteristics on Credit Loan Repayment (SNS 사용특성, 대출특성, 개인특성이 신용대출 상환에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구)

  • Jeong, Wonhoon;Lee, Jaesoon
    • Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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    • v.18 no.5
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    • pp.77-90
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    • 2023
  • This study aims to investigate the potential of alternative credit assessment through Social Networking Sites (SNS) as a complementary tool to conventional loan review processes. It seeks to discern the impact of SNS usage characteristics and loan product attributes on credit loan repayment. To achieve this objective, we conducted a binomial logistic regression analysis examining the influence of SNS usage patterns, loan characteristics, and personal attributes on credit loan conditions, utilizing data from Company A's credit loan program, which integrates SNS data into its actual loan review processes. Our findings reveal several noteworthy insights. Firstly, with respect to profile photos that reflect users' personalities and individual characteristics, individuals who choose to upload photos directly connected to their personal lives, such as images of themselves, their private circles (e.g., family and friends), and photos depicting social activities like hobbies, which tend to be favored by individuals with extroverted tendencies, as well as character and humor-themed photos, which are typically favored by individuals with conscientious traits, demonstrate a higher propensity for diligently repaying credit loans. Conversely, the utilization of photos like landscapes or images concealing one's identity did not exhibit a statistically significant causal relationship with loan repayment. Furthermore, a positive correlation was observed between the extent of SNS usage and the likelihood of loan repayment. However, the level of SNS interaction did not exert a significant effect on the probability of loan repayment. This observation may be attributed to the passive nature of the interaction variable, which primarily involves expressing sympathy for other users' comments rather than generating original content. The study also unveiled the statistical significance of loan duration and the number of loans, representing key characteristics of loan portfolios, in influencing credit loan repayment. This underscores the importance of considering loan duration and the quantity of loans as crucial determinants in the design of microcredit products. Among the personal characteristic variables examined, only gender emerged as a significant factor. This implies that the loan program scrutinized in this analysis does not exhibit substantial discrimination based on age and credit scores, as its customer base predominantly consists of individuals in their twenties and thirties with low credit scores, who encounter challenges in securing loans from traditional financial institutions. This research stands out from prior studies by empirically exploring the relationship between SNS usage and credit loan repayment while incorporating variables not typically addressed in existing credit rating research, such as profile pictures. It underscores the significance of harnessing subjective, unstructured information from SNS for loan screening, offering the potential to mitigate the financial disadvantages faced by borrowers with low credit scores or those ensnared in short-term liquidity constraints due to limited credit history a group often referred to as "thin filers." By utilizing such information, these individuals can potentially reduce their credit costs, whereas they are supposed to accrue a more substantial financial history through credit transactions under conventional credit assessment system.

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A Study on the Continuous Usage Intention Factors of O2O Service (O2O 서비스의 지속사용의도에 미치는 영향요인 연구)

  • Sung Yong Jung;Jin Soo Kim
    • Information Systems Review
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    • v.20 no.4
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    • pp.1-23
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    • 2018
  • A smart phone has been widely spread around world and makes people enjoy online shopping in any time and any place. Recently it also changes the distribution environment. O2O (Online-to-Offline) service becomes new normal due to its convenience of ease shopping of product and services. O2O service market shows steady and steep growth, It is reported that, however, 80% of the businesses has been discontinued within the first year because of unstable business models, customer dissatisfaction and distrust of service. Therefore, it is very important research issue to find out influential factors promoting continuous usage intention of O2O service. Previous study shows that it only considers online characteristics and lack of analysis about offline characteristics and social impact factors. The purpose of this paper is to find out continuous usage intention factors of O2O services by literature review, case analysis, and empirical test. A comprehensive research model and related hypothesis are developed and tested by using a structural equation, Survey was carried out among users who have used O2O service including payment service for at least once. Finally 611 samples are selected out of total 813 surveys. The result shows that the model is theoretically proved and 12 out of 17 hypotheses are accepted. The contribution of this paper is that it provides a new theoretical research model about continuous usage intention factors as well as practical guidelines about promoting continuous usage and growth strategies of O2O service.

An Empirical Study on Influencing Factors of Switching Intention from Online Shopping to Webrooming (온라인 쇼핑에서 웹루밍으로의 쇼핑전환 의도에 영향을 미치는 요인에 대한 연구)

  • Choi, Hyun-Seung;Yang, Sung-Byung
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.22 no.1
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    • pp.19-41
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    • 2016
  • Recently, the proliferation of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet personal computers and the development of information communication technologies (ICT) have led to a big trend of a shift from single-channel shopping to multi-channel shopping. With the emergence of a "smart" group of consumers who want to shop in more reasonable and convenient ways, the boundaries apparently dividing online and offline shopping have collapsed and blurred more than ever before. Thus, there is now fierce competition between online and offline channels. Ever since the emergence of online shopping, a major type of multi-channel shopping has been "showrooming," where consumers visit offline stores to examine products before buying them online. However, because of the growing use of smart devices and the counterattack of offline retailers represented by omni-channel marketing strategies, one of the latest huge trends of shopping is "webrooming," where consumers visit online stores to examine products before buying them offline. This has become a threat to online retailers. In this situation, although it is very important to examine the influencing factors for switching from online shopping to webrooming, most prior studies have mainly focused on a single- or multi-channel shopping pattern. Therefore, this study thoroughly investigated the influencing factors on customers switching from online shopping to webrooming in terms of both the "search" and "purchase" processes through the application of a push-pull-mooring (PPM) framework. In order to test the research model, 280 individual samples were gathered from undergraduate and graduate students who had actual experience with webrooming. The results of the structural equation model (SEM) test revealed that the "pull" effect is strongest on the webrooming intention rather than the "push" or "mooring" effects. This proves a significant relationship between "attractiveness of webrooming" and "webrooming intention." In addition, the results showed that both the "perceived risk of online search" and "perceived risk of online purchase" significantly affect "distrust of online shopping." Similarly, both "perceived benefit of multi-channel search" and "perceived benefit of offline purchase" were found to have significant effects on "attractiveness of webrooming" were also found. Furthermore, the results indicated that "online purchase habit" is the only influencing factor that leads to "online shopping lock-in." The theoretical implications of the study are as follows. First, by examining the multi-channel shopping phenomenon from the perspective of "shopping switching" from online shopping to webrooming, this study complements the limits of the "channel switching" perspective, represented by multi-channel freeriding studies that merely focused on customers' channel switching behaviors from one to another. While extant studies with a channel switching perspective have focused on only one type of multi-channel shopping, where consumers just move from one particular channel to different channels, a study with a shopping switching perspective has the advantage of comprehensively investigating how consumers choose and navigate among diverse types of single- or multi-channel shopping alternatives. In this study, only limited shopping switching behavior from online shopping to webrooming was examined; however, the results should explain various phenomena in a more comprehensive manner from the perspective of shopping switching. Second, this study extends the scope of application of the push-pull-mooring framework, which is quite commonly used in marketing research to explain consumers' product switching behaviors. Through the application of this framework, it is hoped that more diverse shopping switching behaviors can be examined in future research. This study can serve a stepping stone for future studies. One of the most important practical implications of the study is that it may help single- and multi-channel retailers develop more specific customer strategies by revealing the influencing factors of webrooming intention from online shopping. For example, online single-channel retailers can ease the distrust of online shopping to prevent consumers from churning by reducing the perceived risk in terms of online search and purchase. On the other hand, offline retailers can develop specific strategies to increase the attractiveness of webrooming by letting customers perceive the benefits of multi-channel search or offline purchase. Although this study focused only on customers switching from online shopping to webrooming, the results can be expanded to various types of shopping switching behaviors embedded in single- and multi-channel shopping environments, such as showrooming and mobile shopping.

A Hybrid Recommender System based on Collaborative Filtering with Selective Use of Overall and Multicriteria Ratings (종합 평점과 다기준 평점을 선택적으로 활용하는 협업필터링 기반 하이브리드 추천 시스템)

  • Ku, Min Jung;Ahn, Hyunchul
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.24 no.2
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    • pp.85-109
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    • 2018
  • Recommender system recommends the items expected to be purchased by a customer in the future according to his or her previous purchase behaviors. It has been served as a tool for realizing one-to-one personalization for an e-commerce service company. Traditional recommender systems, especially the recommender systems based on collaborative filtering (CF), which is the most popular recommendation algorithm in both academy and industry, are designed to generate the items list for recommendation by using 'overall rating' - a single criterion. However, it has critical limitations in understanding the customers' preferences in detail. Recently, to mitigate these limitations, some leading e-commerce companies have begun to get feedback from their customers in a form of 'multicritera ratings'. Multicriteria ratings enable the companies to understand their customers' preferences from the multidimensional viewpoints. Moreover, it is easy to handle and analyze the multidimensional ratings because they are quantitative. But, the recommendation using multicritera ratings also has limitation that it may omit detail information on a user's preference because it only considers three-to-five predetermined criteria in most cases. Under this background, this study proposes a novel hybrid recommendation system, which selectively uses the results from 'traditional CF' and 'CF using multicriteria ratings'. Our proposed system is based on the premise that some people have holistic preference scheme, whereas others have composite preference scheme. Thus, our system is designed to use traditional CF using overall rating for the users with holistic preference, and to use CF using multicriteria ratings for the users with composite preference. To validate the usefulness of the proposed system, we applied it to a real-world dataset regarding the recommendation for POI (point-of-interests). Providing personalized POI recommendation is getting more attentions as the popularity of the location-based services such as Yelp and Foursquare increases. The dataset was collected from university students via a Web-based online survey system. Using the survey system, we collected the overall ratings as well as the ratings for each criterion for 48 POIs that are located near K university in Seoul, South Korea. The criteria include 'food or taste', 'price' and 'service or mood'. As a result, we obtain 2,878 valid ratings from 112 users. Among 48 items, 38 items (80%) are used as training dataset, and the remaining 10 items (20%) are used as validation dataset. To examine the effectiveness of the proposed system (i.e. hybrid selective model), we compared its performance to the performances of two comparison models - the traditional CF and the CF with multicriteria ratings. The performances of recommender systems were evaluated by using two metrics - average MAE(mean absolute error) and precision-in-top-N. Precision-in-top-N represents the percentage of truly high overall ratings among those that the model predicted would be the N most relevant items for each user. The experimental system was developed using Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). The experimental results showed that our proposed system (avg. MAE = 0.584) outperformed traditional CF (avg. MAE = 0.591) as well as multicriteria CF (avg. AVE = 0.608). We also found that multicriteria CF showed worse performance compared to traditional CF in our data set, which is contradictory to the results in the most previous studies. This result supports the premise of our study that people have two different types of preference schemes - holistic and composite. Besides MAE, the proposed system outperformed all the comparison models in precision-in-top-3, precision-in-top-5, and precision-in-top-7. The results from the paired samples t-test presented that our proposed system outperformed traditional CF with 10% statistical significance level, and multicriteria CF with 1% statistical significance level from the perspective of average MAE. The proposed system sheds light on how to understand and utilize user's preference schemes in recommender systems domain.

A Study on the Application of Outlier Analysis for Fraud Detection: Focused on Transactions of Auction Exception Agricultural Products (부정 탐지를 위한 이상치 분석 활용방안 연구 : 농수산 상장예외품목 거래를 대상으로)

  • Kim, Dongsung;Kim, Kitae;Kim, Jongwoo;Park, Steve
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.20 no.3
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    • pp.93-108
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    • 2014
  • To support business decision making, interests and efforts to analyze and use transaction data in different perspectives are increasing. Such efforts are not only limited to customer management or marketing, but also used for monitoring and detecting fraud transactions. Fraud transactions are evolving into various patterns by taking advantage of information technology. To reflect the evolution of fraud transactions, there are many efforts on fraud detection methods and advanced application systems in order to improve the accuracy and ease of fraud detection. As a case of fraud detection, this study aims to provide effective fraud detection methods for auction exception agricultural products in the largest Korean agricultural wholesale market. Auction exception products policy exists to complement auction-based trades in agricultural wholesale market. That is, most trades on agricultural products are performed by auction; however, specific products are assigned as auction exception products when total volumes of products are relatively small, the number of wholesalers is small, or there are difficulties for wholesalers to purchase the products. However, auction exception products policy makes several problems on fairness and transparency of transaction, which requires help of fraud detection. In this study, to generate fraud detection rules, real huge agricultural products trade transaction data from 2008 to 2010 in the market are analyzed, which increase more than 1 million transactions and 1 billion US dollar in transaction volume. Agricultural transaction data has unique characteristics such as frequent changes in supply volumes and turbulent time-dependent changes in price. Since this was the first trial to identify fraud transactions in this domain, there was no training data set for supervised learning. So, fraud detection rules are generated using outlier detection approach. We assume that outlier transactions have more possibility of fraud transactions than normal transactions. The outlier transactions are identified to compare daily average unit price, weekly average unit price, and quarterly average unit price of product items. Also quarterly averages unit price of product items of the specific wholesalers are used to identify outlier transactions. The reliability of generated fraud detection rules are confirmed by domain experts. To determine whether a transaction is fraudulent or not, normal distribution and normalized Z-value concept are applied. That is, a unit price of a transaction is transformed to Z-value to calculate the occurrence probability when we approximate the distribution of unit prices to normal distribution. The modified Z-value of the unit price in the transaction is used rather than using the original Z-value of it. The reason is that in the case of auction exception agricultural products, Z-values are influenced by outlier fraud transactions themselves because the number of wholesalers is small. The modified Z-values are called Self-Eliminated Z-scores because they are calculated excluding the unit price of the specific transaction which is subject to check whether it is fraud transaction or not. To show the usefulness of the proposed approach, a prototype of fraud transaction detection system is developed using Delphi. The system consists of five main menus and related submenus. First functionalities of the system is to import transaction databases. Next important functions are to set up fraud detection parameters. By changing fraud detection parameters, system users can control the number of potential fraud transactions. Execution functions provide fraud detection results which are found based on fraud detection parameters. The potential fraud transactions can be viewed on screen or exported as files. The study is an initial trial to identify fraud transactions in Auction Exception Agricultural Products. There are still many remained research topics of the issue. First, the scope of analysis data was limited due to the availability of data. It is necessary to include more data on transactions, wholesalers, and producers to detect fraud transactions more accurately. Next, we need to extend the scope of fraud transaction detection to fishery products. Also there are many possibilities to apply different data mining techniques for fraud detection. For example, time series approach is a potential technique to apply the problem. Even though outlier transactions are detected based on unit prices of transactions, however it is possible to derive fraud detection rules based on transaction volumes.

A Hybrid SVM Classifier for Imbalanced Data Sets (불균형 데이터 집합의 분류를 위한 하이브리드 SVM 모델)

  • Lee, Jae Sik;Kwon, Jong Gu
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.19 no.2
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    • pp.125-140
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    • 2013
  • We call a data set in which the number of records belonging to a certain class far outnumbers the number of records belonging to the other class, 'imbalanced data set'. Most of the classification techniques perform poorly on imbalanced data sets. When we evaluate the performance of a certain classification technique, we need to measure not only 'accuracy' but also 'sensitivity' and 'specificity'. In a customer churn prediction problem, 'retention' records account for the majority class, and 'churn' records account for the minority class. Sensitivity measures the proportion of actual retentions which are correctly identified as such. Specificity measures the proportion of churns which are correctly identified as such. The poor performance of the classification techniques on imbalanced data sets is due to the low value of specificity. Many previous researches on imbalanced data sets employed 'oversampling' technique where members of the minority class are sampled more than those of the majority class in order to make a relatively balanced data set. When a classification model is constructed using this oversampled balanced data set, specificity can be improved but sensitivity will be decreased. In this research, we developed a hybrid model of support vector machine (SVM), artificial neural network (ANN) and decision tree, that improves specificity while maintaining sensitivity. We named this hybrid model 'hybrid SVM model.' The process of construction and prediction of our hybrid SVM model is as follows. By oversampling from the original imbalanced data set, a balanced data set is prepared. SVM_I model and ANN_I model are constructed using the imbalanced data set, and SVM_B model is constructed using the balanced data set. SVM_I model is superior in sensitivity and SVM_B model is superior in specificity. For a record on which both SVM_I model and SVM_B model make the same prediction, that prediction becomes the final solution. If they make different prediction, the final solution is determined by the discrimination rules obtained by ANN and decision tree. For a record on which SVM_I model and SVM_B model make different predictions, a decision tree model is constructed using ANN_I output value as input and actual retention or churn as target. We obtained the following two discrimination rules: 'IF ANN_I output value <0.285, THEN Final Solution = Retention' and 'IF ANN_I output value ${\geq}0.285$, THEN Final Solution = Churn.' The threshold 0.285 is the value optimized for the data used in this research. The result we present in this research is the structure or framework of our hybrid SVM model, not a specific threshold value such as 0.285. Therefore, the threshold value in the above discrimination rules can be changed to any value depending on the data. In order to evaluate the performance of our hybrid SVM model, we used the 'churn data set' in UCI Machine Learning Repository, that consists of 85% retention customers and 15% churn customers. Accuracy of the hybrid SVM model is 91.08% that is better than that of SVM_I model or SVM_B model. The points worth noticing here are its sensitivity, 95.02%, and specificity, 69.24%. The sensitivity of SVM_I model is 94.65%, and the specificity of SVM_B model is 67.00%. Therefore the hybrid SVM model developed in this research improves the specificity of SVM_B model while maintaining the sensitivity of SVM_I model.

A study on the improvement of distribution system by overseas agricultural investment (해외농업투자에 따른 유통체계 개선방안에 관한 연구)

  • Sun, Il-Suck;Lee, Dong-Ok
    • Journal of Distribution Science
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    • v.8 no.3
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    • pp.17-26
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    • 2010
  • Recently concerns have been raised due to the unbalanced supply of crops: the price of crops has been unstable and at one point the price went up so high that the word Agflation(agriculture+ inflation) was coined. Korea, in particular, is a small-sized country and needs to secure the stable supply of crops by investing in the produce importation at a national level. Investment in foreign produce importation is becoming more important as a measure for sufficient supply of crops, limited supply of domestic crops, weakened farming conditions worldwide, as well as recent changes in the use of crops due to the development of bio-fuels, influence of carbon emission on crops, the price increase in crops, and influx of foreign hot money. However, there are many problems with investing in foreign produce importation: lack of support from the government; lack of farming information and technology; difficulty in securing the capital; no immediate pay-off from the investment and insufficient management. Although foreign produce is originally more price-competitive than domestic produce, it loses its competiveness in the process of importation (due to high tariffs) and poor distribution system, which makes it difficult to sell in Korea. Therefore, investment in foreign produce importation is being questioned for feasibility; to make it possible, foreign produce must maintain the price-competitiveness. Especially, harvest of agricultural products depends on natural and geographical conditions of each country and those products have indigenous properties, so distribution system according to import and export of agricultural products should be treated more carefully than that of other industries. Distribution costs are differentiated into each item and include cost of sorting and wrapping, cost of wrapping materials, cost of domestic transport, cost of international transport and cost of clearing customs for import and export. So transporting and storing agricultural products generates considerable costs compared with other products. Also, due to upgrade of dietary life, needs for stability, taste and visible quality toward food including agricultural products are being raised and wrong way of storage causes decomposition of food and loss of freshness, making the storage more difficult than that in room temperature, so storage and transport in distribution of agricultural products needs specialty. In addition, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. However, existing distribution system of agricultural products is exposed to various problems including problems in distribution channel, making distribution and strategy for distribution and those problems are as follows. First, in case of investment in overseas agricultural industry, stable supply of the products is difficult because areas of production are dispersed widely and influenced by outer factors due to including overseas distribution channels. Also, at the aspect of quality, standardization of products is difficult, distribution system is quite complicated and unreasonable due to long distribution channels according to international trade and financial and institutional support is not enough. Especially, there are quite a lot of ineffective factors including multi level distribution process, dramatic gap between production cost and customer's cost, lack of physical distribution facilities and difficulties in storage and transport due to lack of wrapping containers. Besides, because import and export of agricultural products has been manages under the company's own distribution according to transaction contract between manufacturers and exporting company, efficiency is low due to excessive investment in fixed costs and lack of specialty in dealing with agricultural products causes fall of value of products, showing the limit to lose price-competitiveness. Especially, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. Second, among tangible and intangible services which promote the efficiency of the whole distribution, a function building distribution environment which includes distribution information, system for standard and inspection, distribution finance, system for diversification of risks, education and training, distribution administration and tax system is wanted. In general, such a function building distribution environment is difficult to be changed and supplement innovatively because its effect compared with investment does not appear immediately despite of its necessity. Especially, in case of distribution of agricultural products, as a function of collecting and distributing is performed individually through various channels, the importance of distribution information and standardization is getting more focus due to the problem of repetition of work and lack of specialty. Also, efficient management of distribution is quite difficult due to lack of professionals in distribution, so support to professional education is needed. Third, though effort to keep self-sufficiency ratio of staple food, rice is regarded as important at the government level, level of dependency on overseas of others crops is high. Therefore, plan for stable securing food resources aside from staple food is also necessary. Especially, governmental organizations of agricultural products distribution in Korea are production-centered and have unreasonable structure whose function at the aspect of distribution and consumption is quite insufficient. And development of new distribution channels which can deal with changes in distribution environment and they do not achieve actual results of strategy for distribution due to non-positive strategy for price distribution. That is, it implies the possibility that base for supply will become vulnerable because it does not mediate appropriate interests on total distribution channels such as manufacturers, wholesale dealers and vendors by emphasizing consumer protection excessively in the distribution of agricultural products. Therefore, this study examined fundamental concept and actual situation for our investment to overseas agriculture, drew necessities, considerations, problems, etc. of overseas agricultural investment and suggested improvements at the level of distribution for price competitiveness of agricultural products cultivated in overseas under five aspects; government's indirect support, distribution's modernization and distribution information function's strengthening, government's political support for distribution facility, transportation route, load and unloading works' improvement, price competitiveness' securing, professional manpower's cultivation by education and training, etc. Here are some suggestions for foreign produce importation. First, the government should conduct a survey on the current distribution channels and analyze the situation to establish a measure for long-term development plans. By providing each agricultural area with a guideline for planning appropriate production of crops, the government can help farmers be ready for importation, and prevent them from producing same crops all at the same time. Government can sign an MOU with the foreign government and promote the importation so that the development of agricultural resources can be stable and steady. Second, the government can establish a strategy for an effective distribution system by providing farmers and agriculture-related workers with the distribution information such as price, production, demand, market structure and location, feature of each crop, and etc. In order for such distribution system to become feasible, the government needs to reconstruct the current distribution system, designate a public organization for providing distribution information and set the criteria for level of produce quality, trade units, and package units. Third, the government should provide financial support and a policy to seek an efficient distribution channel for foreign produce to be delivered fresh: the government should expand distribution facilities (for selecting, packaging, storing, and processing) and transportation vehicles while modernizing old facilities. There should be another policy to improve the efficiency of unloading, and to lower the cost of distribution. Fourth, it is necessary to enact a new law covering exceptional cases for importing produce in order to maintain the price competitiveness; currently the high tariffs is keeping the imported produce from being distributed domestically. However, the new adjustment should be made carefully within the WTO regulations since it can create a problem from giving preferential tariffs. The government can also simplify the distribution channels in order to reduce the cost in the distribution process. Fifth, the government should educate distributors to raise the efficiency and to modernize the distribution system. It is necessary to develop human resources by educating people regarding the foreign agricultural environment, the produce quality, management skills, and by introducing some successful cases in advanced countries.

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